Bret Piatt

I’ll come right out and give my theory up front and then explain why… We need to stop teaching young children “facts” and we need to start teaching them how to learn.  The only reason we teach young children “facts” is to shape their world view into what we want it to be while their minds are easily influenced because they haven’t learned logic, critical/deductive reasoning, and other associated fundamentals required to think independently.

Elementary education in the US is typically half “learning to learn” and half “learning facts”.  You can search and look through many online class schedules across the country and see this.  The “learning to learn” — reading, music, math, art make up part of the day.  The rest of the day — spelling, science, social studies, history is filled with teaching children “facts” and shaping their world view.  Even a fundamental like reading is focused on content over skills to increase speed and comprehension.  Almost none of the public schools offer foreign language even though a number of studies show significant benefits.

Is standardized testing to blame?  Perhaps as it is hard to test for the ability to learn especially in a multiple choice format.  Tests make sure you know “facts”.  Because of these tests and constant measuring we’re afraid to spend time building a foundation so children can learn faster as they age.  Linear progression is “safe” and teaching the ability to answer a question (often through memorization) is favored over teaching the understanding of how to figure out the answer.  Laws like the No Child Left Behind Act focus dollars on ensuring everyone can reach “average” rather than allowing most of the class to move at an accelerated pace (if the effort is spent on getting students below SD -1 to average 80%+ of the students in the class are effectively held back).

My call to action — get social studies and fact memorization science out of elementary schools.  Use social studies to stimulate debate allowing children to discuss issues and form their own opinions.  Use science as a chance to teach critical thinking and problem solving skills.  Resist the temptation to tell children what to believe — make them understand how to formulate an opinion.  This applies to math as well as social studies.  We typically wait until the second hear of high school to teach proofs in geometry.  One example is instead of having children memorize their times tables with no understanding as to why have them figure out multiplication as a better way to do some addition problems.

At some point it is important to learn facts — history, geography, etc. — but by waiting to teach these facts they can be learned in a fraction of the time.  You could spend an hour a day teaching a middle school child all of the facts they’d learn in 5 years of elementary school.  Stop wasting an hour a day on spelling, teach latin and children will learn to spell naturally.

Imagine the following schedule for your child instead of what they have today…

7:50-8:25: Arrival – Pledge, announcements, and a critical thinking logic problem we’ll discuss as a group.

8:25-9:00: Latin – Replace spelling memorization with fundamentals that enable good spelling and a foreign language

9:00-9:40: Math – Teach problem solving, proofs, word problems

9:40-10:50: Reading – Teach concepts to increase speed and comprehension

10:50-11:20: Lunch

11:30-12:00: Recess

12:10-12:40: Music  (M, W, F) / Art (Tu, Th) – Encourage creativity and original thinking

12:40-1:20: Science (M, W, F) / Social Studies (Tu, Th) – Lessons focused on problem solving and critical thinking

1:25-1:55: P.E. (M, W, F) / Library (Tu, Th) – Focus on teamwork and leadership skills

2:00: Dismissal

Our education system isn’t an abysmal train wreck like some people will scream.  It does a good job but it could be better.  Like compound interest builds wealth over time a 10% increase annually in the amount of learning a child does  more than doubles the amount they learn by the time they graduate from high school.  Also by continuing to teach kids how to learn you’ll lower drop out rates — at some point when a child falls too far behind in memorizing facts they give up or start to cheat to fake their way until they reach 16 (or 18, whatever the minimum age in your state) and can stop going.